NARRAGANSETT — The Narragansett Planning Board held a workshop Tuesday to discuss the town’s comprehensive plan. Consultant Nathan E. Kelley, senior planner with Horlsey Witten Group, reviewed the draft of goals and policies regarding community services, facilities, natural hazards and energy. Terence Fleming, chairman, moderated the session.
“We will look at the goals and policies tonight just to check that our framework is complete and that we are comfortable moving forward to identify subsequent action items,” said Kelly.

NARRAGANSETT — The Narragansett Planning Board held a workshop Tuesday to discuss the town’s comprehensive plan. Consultant Nathan E. Kelley, senior planner with Horlsey Witten Group, reviewed the draft of goals and policies regarding community services, facilities, natural hazards and energy. Terence Fleming, chairman, moderated the session.
“We will look at the goals and policies tonight just to check that our framework is complete and that we are comfortable moving forward to identify subsequent action items,” said Kelly.

Assisted by a PowerPoint presentation, Kelly began by discussing the draft of the town’s goals and policies regarding community services and facilities.
The community services and facilities were broken into categories that included administrative services and town hall, schools, public safety, the library, public works, drinking water, wastewater, waste management and stormwater management. Each category had a goal and each goal included several policies. For example, for the library category, the goal was to “provide the Narragansett community with library services that accommodate residents of all ages and abilities.” For that goal, there were several policies, one of which was “offer diverse programming that meets the needs of all residents.”
Kelly went on to discuss the goals and policies for natural hazards and energy.
“The state recently rewrote comprehensive plan legislation and one of the changes is this requirement that towns look at natural hazards now,” he said.
In this category, Narragansett’s goal included minimizing the effects of climate change, sea level rise, and other natural hazards to people, infrastructure and property.
Regarding energy, Kelly said the first goal was reduce energy consumption.
“One of the easiest ways for the town to reduce is to look at their municipal buildings and see if there is low hanging fruit where they can make a moderate investment and get a good return on the investment in a short period of time,” he said.
Regarding wind energy, Michael DeLuca, liaison department director, said that it was better to write the policies in general language in order to give the town council latitude.
After Kelly’s presentation, Terence Fleming initiated the public forum.
The first to speak was Richard Vangermeesch, a Narragansett resident, who asked why the comprehensive plan did not include a community business operation function.
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